Calliope
Calliope , also known by her chathandle , is a player from an unknown session of the game. Biography She was initially believed to be a troll, but is in fact a cherub who likes to cosplay as a troll. She has stated that she is a female and has been shown to have an appearance highly resembling that of . She has , though of a different shade of green than what is shown on the troll hemospectrum. She wears a dark green tailcoat (which bears her symbol) and trousers, a black shirt and a red bowtie. Her sleeves feature bright red 6-and-9 cufflinks, probably halves of the Cancer sign à la Sign of the Signless as has been seen on other characters (Aranea, for instance). One of her ankles has a shackle bearing uu's symbol. When she cosplays as Callie Ohpeee, she additionally wears a white hairpiece, grey facepaint and gloves, and a headband with corkscrew-shaped horns which recall her symbol. Calliope has a very polite, cheerful and friendly demeanor, she tries to be helpful where she can although she is cautious about revealing too much information about herself due to her situation. She seems to be quite creative and is a writer and a talented artist. Her self esteem is quite low and she considers herself ugly, wishing to be more like humans and trolls. Her usually cheery mood can become defeatist and sometimes cranky when faced with problems, especially those relating to uu, but she usually stays quite polite even when in a bad mood. She wields a wand that has duality as a pistol, similar to Lord English's staff/AK47 (Calliope that her brother's favored weapon was a little heavy handed). She and her 'brother' share a Sylladex featuring the "juju" Fetch Modus, which operates such that whatever one 'sibling' captchalogues is only retrievable by the other. This is reminiscent of Bughouse, a game related to chess where two chess games are going on simultaneously and the pieces captured are passed to partner playing on the other board to be reentered into play. And as we know, uu likes games and Homestuck likes chess. Name The name Calliope comes from the Greek muse of epic poetry, which gives her the title "Muse of Space". The muse also gave her name to a musical instrument similar to an organ, often played at circuses. The Homestuck song: "Midnight Calliope" was played when Gamzee had switched from his calm, easy-going personality to his shockingly violent one, which mirrors the relationship between Calliope and her "brother". Furthering the theme of muses, Uranus was the Greek god of the sky, and was considered the muse of astronomers; thus, William Herschel named the planet that he and his sister discovered after Uranus. Calliope chose uranianUmbra as her online handle due to her fascination with the planet Uranus's unique rotation, though when explaining this to Roxy, she is unable to remember the word for a ball's topspin – in pool, the term for putting spin on the cue ball is "english". Umbra is Latin for "shadow" (whence we get 'umbrage', meaning anger); in English, it can mean the same, but usually refers specifically to the darkest part of a shadow. Symbol Calliope's symbol is seen to be a cross between the caduceus (☤), symbol of the Greek god Hermes, and the rod of Asclepius (which is otherwise known as the asklepion), the latter of which being one of the two Ophiuchus symbols. By contrast, undyingUmbrage's chat symbol is the other, less common Ophiuchus symbol. Aside from being the messenger of the gods, Hermes was also the guardian of boundaries and the travelers who cross them. Asclepius, on the other hand, was a healer in Greek mythology. When he died, he became the constellation Ophiuchus. In North America, the caduceus and asklepion are often confused for one another, where the former is used to symbolize the medical profession, while it is used to represent commerce elsewhere. While Calliope uses this symbol, uu uses the Japanese-preferred symbol for Ophiuchus which is a tilde superimposed over the letter U, a stylized symbol of a man holding a snake. The tilde also resembles Calliope's fake horns, each of which in turn resembles one of the entwined snakes. Calliope's symbol may additionally be a reference to the myth of Tiresias, who was turned into a woman for (variously) seven or nine years by Hera as punishment for striking two copulating snakes with a staff. History Calliope first appeared at the end of the flash. At the end of the flash, a terminal with a caduceus symbol can be seen, which also serves as her symbol. shows a pair of troll-like hands (later shown to be gloves), and the screen displays Alternian text that reads "Click > to continue". The terminal appears similar to the Homestuck Interface Devices used by Exiles, except with only one screen. Later on we see Calliope typing from that terminal. She claims that the terminal allows her to view the post-Scratch Homestuck Kids until a point in their session when Roxy blacks it out entirely. However, she suggests that she can still communicate through text. Her whereabouts are currently unknown. Her session of the game is separate from all four known sessions (the kids and trolls' pre-Scratch and post-Scratch sessions). It is possible that she is from the universe the post-scratch kids are supposed to create, or the post-scratch earth, far enough in the future for their sun to be a red giant. She is not able to travel very far outside of the entrance hatch to her room due to the chain around her ankle. She appears to dwell on the trolls' crashed , embedded into the ground of an unknown planet covered in numerous copies of the Statue of Liberty with shitty JPEG artifacts. Outside, a massive red supergiant can be seen which is dangerously close to collapsing. In her session, she is a Muse of Space. She has mentioned to Jane that she has dreamt on Prospit all her life, an ability that thus far has only been possessed by two other players, both Heroes of Space themselves. The Muse class is an exceedingly rare, powerful passive class only assigned to females. At some point she came into the possession of that compiles knowledge Rose knows about Sburb and the kids' and trolls' situation, although Gamzee has edited out all information relating to , and himself. Calliope is supplying this information to the B2 kids, thus fulfilling Relationships to Other Characters To Her Brother In her conversation with Dirk she talks about her "brother" who is supposed to be her client player, although she has offered to be his client instead. She stresses that he is not her brother in the sense that humans would understand it and they do not even have the same blood color - although they still have genetic similarity. Calliope's dreamself was killed by uu. He promised not to kill her if Dirk plays a "game" with him, however in a "twist ending" he revealed that he had their session's Jack Noir kill Calliope before said game (at least from his temporal perspective). Calliope and undyingUmbrage , a fact that was widely speculated before its revelation. In a conversation Calliope had with Jane in Myststuck, she claims that uu made a mess of her house while she slept. Seeing that Calliope and uu have never met in person, Jane questions this, which causes Calliope to change the topic. It is proven that she and her "brother" share the same body, as she claims that she has never met uu, despite the fact that they share a room. Fittingly, Calliope states in with Jane that she and her brother are "Up to qUite a bit fUrther than oUr neck in crazy game". She specifically says "our neck" instead of "our necks". Later Calliope explains to Roxy that when she hears or reads her "brother's" name she will fall asleep and he will wake up and that the same goes for him should he hear or read her name. Interestingly, her "brother" managed to somehow write her name in one of his Unpleasant Notes, presumably without waking her up. As they have different blood colors it is unknown how this would work, however as they have separate dream selves it is possible one of their blood colors is only shown in their dream self. As they do switch, Calliope makes sure to shackle her other leg with the shackle bearing her symbol, one that she can only unlock, while it is likely that the shackle bearing uu's symbol can only be unlocked by him. They perform this switch in their bed, which is not a bed but a Sarswapagus. To the Post-Scratch Kids She could possibly be considered the patron of all the post-scratch kids. Dirk explains to Jake that the chat client allowing him and Roxy to communicate with Jake and Jane was given to him by an "alien friend" in conversation. This more than likely implies that Calliope is the one who sent it to them, and that she did so as a means to set up the foundation for their session. She later admits to Dirk that she is a fan of their story and near obsessed with them. She also admits to having written fan fiction about them, including fan fiction of the romantic kind. Calliope seems very friendly and cordial toward Jane and Jake, offering constructive advice about their session. However, due to the rules of hers and uu's game, can be extraordinarily cagey when referring to personal details about herself. She is like this with Dirk and Roxy, but not shown to as much of an extent. She seems very fond of Roxy, and even confides in her during the final moments of her visibility into Roxy's session. Calliope reveals to Roxy her name, title, and race, and even gives her some fan art of a Trickster Roxy. She also admits to Roxy how beautiful she finds both the human and troll races, and how insecure she is about her own appearance, even going so far as to say that no one would even kiss her as a means of revival as a result. She seems taken aback by the notion of a flushed relationship, due to her race's standpoint on the matter, but does not seem to object much to pale relationships. This is shown during this very same interaction with Roxy. With Calmasis Post-scratch Rose wrote a book which seems to reference events involving Calliope and undyingUmbrage and stars a character named Calmasis, who seems to be representative of them both. This would tie in well with Calmasis' androgynous nature. The cover of the book also features Calliope's associated symbol and Calliope's outfit is nearly identical to Calmasis', with the dark green suit and red bow tie. Calliope also wears a wig that matches Calmasis' snow-white hair, furthering the link between them. As Calmasis seemingly represents both Calliope and uu, it is unclear which one is the antihero and which the antagonist. Calliope and uu are seen playing a game of chess, uu had created tiny caps for his king and queen in order to hide one as the other after convincing Calliope to let him swap his king and queen's starting positions and thus fool her into believing he had swapped them while actually leaving them in their normal starting position. In the book Calmasis engages Zazzerpan in a game of chess, which closely parallels the game of chess between Calliope and uu. However, during their chess game, it was in fact undyingUmbrage who plays the role of Calmasis, and Calliope who emulated Zazzerpan. Calmasis also references a prevalent fan speculation that Calliope is actually an antagonist like Calmasis ends up being in CoTL. As noted previously, Calliope is something of an antithetical counterpart to the trolls, particularly Karkat. It therefore follows that since the rude Karkat turned out to be good, the seemingly kind Calliope could possibly be evil. However uu acts as an exaggeration of Karkat and has sadistic tendencies. This further led to speculation about a connection to the Sufferer; these speculations were seemingly proven wrong when Calliope was revealed as a cherub. Andrew Hussie was seen dressed in with Calliope's sign, horns, and gray face paint, later is was shown that Calliope's troll-like appearance was also a costume, meaning details of Hussie's cosplay such as fake horns and fake grey skin were in fact accurate as it was cosplay of a cosplay. Calmasis was also displaying both Calliope's and uu's chat symbols, set against a lime green and cherry red background representing Calliope's and uu's blood colors. When Calliope was revealed, she was shown with a shackle bearing undyingUmbrage's symbol. As such Calmasis' shackle and background color seem to suggest that both are shackled with the shackle bearing the symbol of the other meaning that uu likely wears a shackle bearing Calliope's symbol. The jagged two-colour split background style seen on that page is one which is normally associated with conflict – for instance, between , or and Hussie}} – which reinforces the apparent tension between Calliope and uu. Both colors are also the tones for the beta and alpha kids Sburb symbol. Trivia *During the revelation of Calliope's name, Roxy's drunken slur of her name, lined up with her correction in the very next line of text, puts the letters "lil" and "cal" together vertically. This further ties Calliope with Lord English, as Lil' Cal is his ectobiological "grandfather" of sorts. *Her name could be a reference to the protagonist of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Middlesex in which the protagonist, an intersex individual named Calliope, begins life as a female but switches to being male and takes on the name of "Cal". * When the update revealing Calliope's name and species was first released, Andrew Hussie put an author's note on that showed her true appearance asking readers not to widely circulate the picture; as an alternative, he provided of the page depicting Calliope as a troll, thus preserving the surprise for those who had yet to read the update. The note was taken down a few hours later. ** Indeed, the MSPA Wiki itself used this version for a while. * Similar to how the trolls were based on common internet archetypes, Calliope is based on the MS Paint Adventures fandom; Andrew Hussie has referred to her as the obnoxious fandom avatar character. ** Calliope (and possibly uu) may also be a reference to character roleplayers who chat as opposite-gender and opposite-sex characters, or roleplayers who switch frequently between a multitude of accounts and fantrolls, if one or more common guesses about Calliope's gender irregularities and/or connection to uu are correct. ** The association is not hard to make. She likes dressing up as a troll (cosplaying), makes colourful "fan-art", writes (lemon) "fan-fics". She even makes her own trollsona, whose name is made to fit trolls' 6-letter names: Callie Ohpeee (which mirrors Vriska's spidersona in Alterniabound). She also has a thing for wild speculations about the story, making up crazy out of every , ending up . * of Calliope's conversations with Jane is an antithesis of Karkat's with Jade (as well as the between Kanaya and Aradia). *Calliope, uu, and Karkat have all sworn off "hemotyping" and use custom grays which differ slightly from the more common RGB-defined grays. In the hex code of Calliope's color, the 6's from Karkat's color are replaced by 9's (#626262 becomes #929292); Karkat's symbol is an inverted 69. **92 is the atomic number of uranium. Uranium is naturally silvery grey, but in some forms appears bright green, similar to the two colors of Calliope's chat symbol and also tying with Calliope being a lime-blood. **Karkat Vantas' typing color is directly in between that of Calliope and uu's. *The 4 universes that Calliope refers to are: the instance of the trolls' universe in which the Ancestors played Sgrub (A1), the instance of the trolls' universe in which the current trolls played Sgrub (A2), the instance of our universe in which the pre-scratch kids played Sburb (B1) and the instance of our universe in which the post-scratch kids will play Sburb (B2). *Most likely, as the kids and trolls' Pesterchum handles are combinations of the A-C-G-T bases of DNA, Calliope's cherub's obsession with the letter U is a reference to uracil, a nucleotide base that RNA contains in place of thymine (T). *Calliope's client begins and ends with cheering, which is different from Trollian, Pesterchum and Bettybother which begin and cease with trolling, pestering and bothering, respectively. **uu's swaps jeering for cheering. * Calliope's fake horns look quite similar to the horns in the poster to the right in . Oddly enough, the poster immediately left of that depicts a clown with horns that curve identically on both sides, resembling a "U" shape as a result. *Calliope's use of British English ties in with her lime blood, since "limey" is a common slang term for British people. In addition, the alternate spelling of some words (e.g. armor; armour, color; colour) lends itself to a higher instance of the letter "u" than in American English. It also ties in to her resemblance to Lord "English". *In , part of the artwork for coloUrs and mayhem: Universe B is one of her drawings. **The artworks on the wall were drawn by DuedlyFirearms.